Couple wrongly arrested over Gatwick Airport drone debacle score £200k payout from cops
- Reference: 1592222444
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/06/15/gatwick_drone_couple_payout/
- Source link:
Paul Gait and Elaine Kirk were arrested and held in cells for 36 hours after their Crawley home was stormed by a dozen police gunmen in December 2018. The payout, negotiated by lawyers after the innocent couple sued police, shines fresh light on the behaviour of Sussex Police's chief constable, Giles York.
"We are delighted to have finally received vindication, it has been a very long fight for justice," said the couple in a statement [1]reported by The Guardian newspaper. "The sums being paid by Sussex Police and letter received from the assistant chief constable are confirmation of our innocence and wrongful treatment."
The two sued in the civil courts for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment.
Panicky police were under pressure to find whoever was [2]flying a drone near Gatwick Airport 18 months ago, causing it to shut down for three days right as the Christmas travel season was beginning.
Gait had been at work when the first few drone sightings were reported to police. Despite colleagues immediately vouching for him, desperate cops continued to hold him and Kirk in custody regardless, while searching for evidence.
It later emerged (by York's [3]own admission ) that Sussex Police were chasing their own drones over Gatwick, having sent them up to try and spot the errant craft causing the shutdown. Nonetheless, the chief constable made an insincere radio apology to the couple shortly after the incident – insincere because in the next breath of his BBC [4]interview he said: "[But] what might have been worse as an experience for [Gait and Kirk] would have been to be released under investigation still."
York was suggesting that things would have been somehow worse for Gait and Kirk had his constables released the innocent couple from custody as soon as they realised they'd got it wrong, rather than keeping them for the maximum time allowed by law. The couple are said to have received "no explanation" from police as to why they were kept locked in cells for so long.
The chief constable yesterday deployed the force's assistant chief constable to take all the flak on his behalf. David Miller said in a letter to the Gaits: "We recognise that things could have been done differently and, as a result, Sussex Police have agreed to pay you compensation and legal costs."
The Gaits received £55,000 in compensation with the remaining £145,000 going to their legal costs.
Sussex Police [5]wasted £790,000 on its failed investigation , having interviewed 96 "people of interest" in the process. Nobody else was arrested and nobody has ever been charged. It seems unlikely, two years later, that the full truth will ever be known. ®
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[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/14/gatwick-drone-arrest-couple-win-200000-from-sussex-police
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2018/12/20/london_gatwick_airport_drones/
[3] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/gatwick-drone-latest-devices-found-near-airport-ruled-out-of-involvement-with-christmas-flight-a4026791.html
[4] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-46709353
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2019/09/27/gatwick_drone_probe_closed_sussex_police/
[6] https://go.theregister.com/tl/1956/-8476/the-service-mesh-era-architecting-securing-and-managing-microservices-with-istio?td=wptl1956
I agree but the lawyers would never have it, it would reduce their cut of the compensation!
Alright, lock the lawyers up too. Everyone happy now?
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. — Henry VI, part 2, act 4, scene 2.
Cue X-Files music....
It seems unlikely, two years later, that the full truth will ever be known.
Don't know whether to cue the music from the X-Files.... or the Keystone Cops.
icon: The Truth is out there....but it was easier to try to fit up an innocent couple.
Re: Cue X-Files music....
The Truth is out there....but it was easier to try to fit up an innocent couple.
And it did it's intended job, allowed the airport to be opened through the police pretending they had caught the culprits, had removed the threat to flights, even though they had not.
They needed a fall-guy to get themselves out of the mess they'd got themselves in and, as is often the case, any innocent victim will do.
Re: Cue X-Files music....
"it did it's intended job" - Oh the shame. And the edit window has long closed. Theirs nothing left to do but to go stand in that they're corner.
Bozo's in charge
Seems you must graduate from Clown College to get one of these jobs where you can screw up royally, and still not be prosecuted for ignorance... doo doot dooty...
No clown icon, must be in this coat somewhere...
Drones ...
This story just drones on and on ...
So that's a nice round million quid wasted on this nonsense. They should make the chiefd constable pay some of it.
The legal beagles scored almost 75%?
Or does that include court charges?
You could feel envious at the lawyers, but I knew one who changed to IT: he was fed up with everyone always being so upset in his old profession.
Re: The legal beagles scored almost 75%?
And do you honestly think that helped his image?
Not an admission of a problem though
"We recognise that things could have been done differently and, as a result, Sussex Police have agreed to pay you compensation and legal costs."
should, not could, and a mention of procedural changes to avoid recurrence?
Re: Not an admission of a problem though
> a mention of procedural changes to avoid recurrence?
Yes next time the police will make sure they arrest somebody a bit darker, call them terrorists and hold them for 28days with a bit of "enhanced questioning" until they confess.
I have to admit...
I'm still flabbergasted that drone footage from those flights hasnt emerged on youtube or some Toerag hasnt fessed up on 4chan (or wherever) with a "hrhrh it was me!".
People are crap at keeping secrets as a rule. Especially 2 years down the track when it keeps popping up in the news. That whoever was behind it hasnt let slip in the pub that "yeah ok it was me." is a big surprise.
Either the person has a lot more willpower than the vast majority of people or they got one hell of a scare from the amount of publicity it got. Still if its the second one, then eventually it will come out. Fear only keeps people quiet for so long...
Re: I have to admit...
Or it wasn't actually a drone. I know there's been plastic grocery bags IDed as drones.
https://i.imgur.com/7lx3aJD.jpg
Re: I have to admit...
The certain knowledge that their life would be absolutely destroyed by the police and criminal justice system as an example to other people is obviously enough to put off even the stupid.
And that before allowing for the fact that even if you accept that the scary sort of lunatics make up maybe one in ten thousand people when you shut down an airport then you've probably got a large enough sample size that those people might take to throwing bricks through your windows, sticking nails in your car tyres etc.
Re: I have to admit...
Considering the screams & calls for this couple to be strung up by the neck & other unpleasantries by the mob rule of FaecesBook & also IIRC suffered vandalism to their property, while they were in custody & while the drone operators hunt was still on-going.
I'd follow one of my ex-bosses Golden Rule of keeping a ultra low profile too (Shame he didn't adhere to it himself BTW).
Re: I have to admit...
Or, and I might be going on a limb here, there was no drone to begin with, only the ones the police sent later...
Remarkable. One assumes it has been paid - unlike compensation to, say the Windrush victims which is still being dragged out in the courts - or the blood transfusion scandal in the UK (where they rely on the victims dying before they have to pay). I don't have any skin in the game, other than being disgusted by the whole rotten lot of them!
They're starting to offer payments to the Windrush claimants - they're just [1]an order of magnitude lower for a much more severe claim.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/17/windrush-victim-rejects-insulting-offer-of-22000-payout-compensation
I think if I were in government, I'd be strongly urging that a certain chief constable be given a P45 right now.
I don't think that's in the government's power. The elected police commissioner gets to do that (except they won't as they're probably old pals).
"… probably old pals …"
Sometimes, but not always. In my own area…
Back in 2012, for the first elections for the new position of Police Commissioner, a retired cop offered himself to the Conservative Party. The party decided he was too close to the police, and chose someone else. The ex-cop stood as an Independent.
The Conservative won the most of the first preference votes, but not an outright majority. After the second and third preferences were counted, the Independent ex-cop was declared the winner. But four years later, 2016, a Conservative was voted in.
Now the Conservatives have ditched their own man, who will be re-standing as an Independent, and have chosen a lawyer. Politics is a rough game.
The election was to have been this year, but will now be in 2021.
You're assuming that someone in the gubbermint knows what incompetence looks like. Pot, Kettle, and all that.
What's the chances
This poor sod gets pulled over a few times for random traffic issues over the next couple of years.
In my experience the police don't like it when you embarrass them publicly
Payout, but no justice.
I bet they are going to get charged room and board by the corrupt system for the time spent in jail. And I bet not a single person in the police or CPS is going to pay for the violation of their rights. Because we are all equal, but some people are more equal than others. Until the police and CPS no longer investigate themselves, and qualified immunity is seriously limited, we are all just sheep grinding in the system.
I thought at the time this is just kids,
At the time this story broke i felt that it was some child playing with their birthday pressie not realising the chaos they were causing. The keystone cops should have a root and branch review into their lack of common sense and understanding of the tech
Pictures or it didn't happen
The fact that no-one who 'saw' the drone actually had a decent camera, just like everyone ever who saw a ghost, Nessie or got kidnapped by aliens, makes me think it never happened. And before anyone quotes resolution of Iphone whatevers, this was an airport, with half the world's press, surrounded by plane spotters, and all the technology the state could rustle up - presumably things like police helicopters with cameras and whatever the secret squirrels have tucked away. I know from personal experience that the human mind is really really good at seeing what it's told it's going to see. That's how magicians earn a living. If you are looking for drones then the lights on a crane, Venus, that plane 10 miles away or whatever are much more likely to be misinterpreted.
£145,000 on legal fees...
145000 / £300* per hour = 480 hrs, ~96 working days on a 5 hour day (they are lawyers after all)
How did they clock up just shy of half a working year of legal effort from 36 hours and no charges? Even allowing for a couple of opinions at £2000 a pop, that's still a lot of effort (er, cost) to negotiate a £55k settlement!
M
* https://www.unbiased.co.uk/life/get-smart/how-much-does-a-solicitor-cost - London based, 8+ years litigation
Before drones were a thing if a Tescos bag drifted past the cockpit of an airliner but not recognised as such by the crew they would have put it down as a UFO and not report it because of the derision it would have brought or worse. Now because there are drones anything that can't be directly identified is automatically a drone so it can be reported without stigma.
They should have asked as part of their compensation for the Chief Constable to be locked up in police cells for 36 hours (under an alias).